Mending
by chloedahling
Summary: Elliot has been gone for 3 years. Olivia is battling the aftermath of her haunting torture. When a college rape brings Lizzie Stabler back to SVU, and Elliot and Olivia inevitably meet again, how can they put their once-unbreakable friendship back together? Will it lead to more? E/O, set in season 15
1. Prologue

Olivia

There are things you always remember. Things that stay with you forever, like piles over piles of paperwork, freshly brewed coffees in the biggest size they sell, things like being next to a man close to twenty-four hours a day and wondering, just wondering, what it would be like to take up the part of his heart that was reserved for someone else.

The interrogation room is like a prison. One of the three metal chairs is turned towards me, reminding me that it will always be empty of the body who occupied it for so long he could have called it his own, and cold floors reject the tears which splatter onto them—my tears. Five minutes, I told them, but I could stay here until I cried a tear for every single day we saw each other and still have more to spare.

_No_. I have seen sorrows much worse than mine, enough to eclipse them into something barely visible. Twelve years have passed with him, and another twelve years will pass without him—although I feel a piece of my heart snap off at the thought, it is true. I will go on.

I inhale a final sniffle, wipe off my eyes, and open the door to return to work. There are things you always remember, but there are things you can forget.


	2. Chapter 1

Author's Note: Before we get too far into this story, I should mention a few things I have changed. I took Cassidy out, not because I dislike him but because it's easier not having to shove him aside when Elliot and Olivia's sexual tension explodes. I also mention Olivia having cuts and burns from her torture, because in the premiere episode I felt like she wasn't beaten up enough (not because I don't love her to pieces, but because it didn't seem realistic that this guy would torture all his victims half or all the way to death but barely touch Liv). Everything else should make sense. Please review! I'm really excited about this story and I want to hear what you think so far-I promise, the E/O is going to be laid down heavy before too long, we just have to have some buildup.

Chapter 1

Before I leave for work in the morning, I have time to shower thoroughly. I didn't get any calls in the middle of the night about victims found dead or in hospitals with more bruises than you could count on both hands, so I had time to wash every piece of skin with smooth circular strokes: up my goosebumped arms and even behind my ears. I trace my fingers across my chest, where my breasts are still marred by red cigarette burns, and down the curve of my hip, where tick-mark cuts have yet to become scars.

This is what I have become. Every day I wait to be completely healed, as if it's a process you can measure—as if it's something you know for sure. I have told hundreds of victims that they would find their peace, I swore it on my life and my career, but now I am beginning to wonder if you ever find peace. Do the cuts and burns and broken ribs ever truly go away? Or will I see them as hallucinations even when the skin and bones are healed?

I don't know any of these answers for sure. But I go to work every day and I tell victims, with the greatest conviction, that they someday they will forget their attack. I tell them that all the flashbacks, and all the monsters hiding everywhere—in the dark, in suspicious people on the street, in sudden noises and in creaks during the night—will disappear just as they did after childhood. I tell them that someday when they are in the shower they will look at their body and it will feel like their own again, not like something stolen from them. I tell them that someday they will remember how they are a work of art and not a sick conquest, how there are millions of depraved people who do horrible things—and I can personally testify to that—but there are also plenty of people who have nothing but good in their hearts. I ask them to return to a state they were in before, even though I know that they have been changed irreversibly, and if they think they are the same again they are only pretending.

I step out of the shower and enclose myself in the warmth of a towel. As much as I enjoyed the peace of an eventless morning, at least when there is chaos I don't have any time for thinking—thinking is often the most harmful thing of all.

The first thing I see at my desk is a face that I assume to be one I have never seen before, but as I draw closer it becomes clear. She is much older than when I last saw her, not an old teenager anymore but a young woman, and little things have changed: instead of the perky ponytail of youth, her hair is modestly straight, and her eyes have a depth I never noticed before—certainly they show the wisdom and maturity of tacked-on years. I am relieved to notice that her posture is not the slump of a victim but the proud stance of someone who has a purpose, even though she is unfamiliar here.

"Lizzie!" I say cheerfully, although forming her name in my mouth is an experience which adds extra beats to my heart, and I wonder if Cragen knows she is here. "How are you?"

She smiles. She's really a woman, isn't she, this girl who I first knew as an eight-year-old. "I'm good," she says, and I wait for the unveiling of the thing which brought her here. I don't dare consider what it might be. "It's been a while, hasn't it? I don't recognize as many faces as I thought I would."

"A lot has changed," I agree. I pull up a chair next to my desk, where the computer is blue with the NYPD home screen. "Would you like to sit down?"

Lizzie nods, and when she is in the chair she begins, "I'm not here because I've been raped. But someone else has."

"Can you tell me her name?" I slide a pen and paper into my reach.

"Carla Ottoman. She's a student at NYU, and I don't know her that well, but I talked to her. A friend of my friend's knew her—Sophia Bernhardt—and told me that she reported a rape to the school, but they told her not to press charges. When I found Carla and talked to her, I knew something had to be done. She was raped, Olivia—I know she's telling the truth, and I know that if Dad knew about it, he would do anything he could to get justice for her."

"You didn't tell your father?" A question about him is something I've been skirting around ever since I initially saw his daughter.

Lizzie gives me a look that is too short to interpret. "Dad's been in a rough spot ever since—" she bites her lip, "well, ever since he and Mom split. And besides, he's not a cop anymore. He can't do anything, but I know you can."

"You did the right thing by coming here, Lizzie," I say while my mind buzzes in a way that it shouldn't—Elliot and Kathy split?—and my heart beats in a way that is dangerous.

"I've been raised right. I hope my parents know that."

"They do," I assure her, although I couldn't say for sure what is the truth. "They do. And we're going to do the best we can to investigate this, Lizzie, because of what you just told me."

She nods, and her eyes scan the room before focusing back on me. "Olivia, will you do me a favor?"

"Anything."

"Well, Dad—I mean, when I said he's in a rough spot…just don't tell him I was here, okay?"

Although surprised, I affirm. I couldn't make contact with him even if I wanted to.

It isn't noon before Finn and Amanda are back from the college and Carla Ottoman's name is written on the white board in Amaro's narrow font of all-uppercase letters. "Carla says she was raped two Fridays ago," Finn says in his slick tone, "at a party in the dorms on campus. There was alcohol, drugs, the usual, and Carla says she was slipped a roofie before she was attacked. She woke up naked and alone in her room with sore inner thighs, and there was a used condom on the floor next to her bed."

"Perfect!" I say. "There's the DNA right there."

"We have the DNA," Rollins says as she scribbles a name on the white board next to Carla's. "But Randy Thomas says he had consensual sex with her. He says she was tipsy, and we have no actual evidence that Carla was slipped any drugs. She may have had consensual sex and just not remembered it."

"She says she was raped!" I insist. "You said it yourself—she had sore legs, there was a used condom, and she didn't remember anything. If she woke up with no memory of what happened, she was obviously either drugged or she was too drunk to consent, anyway. Whichever one it is, it's rape."

Amanda shrugs. "It might not be. According to the school, Randy Thomas told them that Carla was tipsy, which means she could have been sober enough to be aware of her actions but drunk enough that she wouldn't remember it."

"Colleges are notorious for covering this stuff up. If Carla's case is like everyone else's, which it is, then NYU probably told her that she was wrong and she should just forget about it because there's nothing they can do."

"There's no way to tell," Cragen says. "At this point, it's he-said-she-said. Take Amaro and go talk to some of the other people who were at the party; see how tipsy Carla really was. And Finn and Rollins: get the school's records on the case and see if you can find any information they might have—or might not have. We're going to treat this as a possible rape until we can find out what really happened."


End file.
